One year without rape

Imagine if you felt safe to desire. Not dream, not hope, fuck no. Desire. Hunger, like some wild thing.

Imagine following the guy you just met home, because the pull is there, because you feel like exploring, without a single thought about what anyone would think if you did, or whether your “no” will be respected or not.

Imagine never having felt those unwanted hands touching, groping, grabbing your body, on the subway, on the dance floor, in the classroom.

Imagine never being told you need to control yourself because he can’t.

Imagine never being told that God finds you lacking, your body and your sexuality dirty.

Imagine girls moving, playing, relating and creating in a world like that.

Growing BIG, because no one says not to.

Imagine walking home alone at night, slowly through the city park. Moonlight filtering through the leaves of a chestnut tree, a fluttering pattern of light and dark on the ground before you, calling for you to stop and enjoy it.

Imagine allowing yourself to be absorbed, for more than a split second, by the strange beauty of it all. The darkness, the cold light, the intense aliveness of the tree.

Imagine hearing the sound of footsteps approaching, hearing it as just another addition to the rhythm of that night, holding no meaning beyond informing you that another human being is passing. Someone else is walking home, or away.

Imagine the complete absence of fear.

No quick turning around to check who is coming (is it a man?). No closing your fingers around the sharp edges of your keys or reaching for the possible safety of your cell phone, pretending to speak to someone, ”meeting you there in just a minute!”. No hastening your steps to get away (before it’s too late).

Just you, at peace, absorbed and filled up by the night. Your night, your park, your walk. Your freedom.

Imagine the energy freed up. What you could do with that energy. What you could create. What gifts. What growth. What longed-for change.

The space literally opening up, all around your body. Can you feel it?

That vast field of pure potential, of raw creativity, where the new is born, the breakthroughs, the truth, the brilliance, the genius that you (already) are. The field of sacred, glorious, explosive power.

Aren’t you hungry for it? I am freaking starving.

Imagine power, without the power struggle, the powerlessness, the power games.